The pack below didn’t seem to have noticed the doom hovering above their heads. They kept following the wall, yelping to each other. They seemed to be testing the boundary, searching for a crack in the defense.
What are they doing here? Her human’s agitation made their tail curve, their deadliest venom gathering in the stinger at its tip. Are they Gaze’s people?
One of the hellhounds hesitated, nose tilting upward. She tensed—but the hound didn’t erupt into full-throated howls of alarm, as it surely would have done had it caught her scent. Instead, it barked, attracting the attention of its pack mates. Breaking off from running the boundary, they milled and yipped for a few moments, as though conferring with each other.
Then, as one, they turned tail. The pack headed away from the territory, disappearing into the woods.
None of them looked up, though. And she could still track the lights of their eyes moving through the leafless canopy.
She started to follow, but her other-self jerked her back like a collar around her neck. She struggled and snapped in mid-air, fighting herself. Part of her wanted to fly back to the lair, to warn her mate what she had seen. The other part wanted to hunt down the intruders and punish them for daring to challenge her territory.
Something half-remembered tickled the back of her mind, like a stray feather. Something her sister, her treasure, had said once about hellhounds. About them only letting themselves be seen if they wanted to be seen…
But the ones below were not invisible. Why would they hide themselves, when they didn’t even know they were being hunted? Perhaps they had simply tired, and were returning to their own lair. Or perhaps they had been summoned back by their red-eyed alpha.
If she followed them now, they might lead her straight to him.
That thought resolved her divided mind. She extended her wings, catching an air current so that she could silently follow the fleeing pack without so much as a flap to betray her presence.
Mate! she called out in her mind, hoping to reach his. Mate, enemies are near! Be wary, be on guard!
She had no sense that he heard. He was too far away, and the bond between them was too weak.
She clamped her jaws shut on a snarl of annoyance. Why hadn’t they mated yet? If they were fully joined, she would have been able to reach him as easily as if he flew at her wingtip.
No time for regrets now. All her cunning and focus was needed for the hunt.
Silent and deadly, she shadowed the pack…and never wondered if she was being lured away.
The laughter rising from the ballroom stabbed through his head like knives. His unicorn flattened its ears, shying away from the knots of excited, chattering guests cluttering the corridors. Their vita
l auras were viciously sharp to his sixth sense.
Hugh clenched his teeth, unable to keep even a semblance of a polite smile on his face as he edged through the crowds. Despite his uninviting expression, he was still aware of heads turning to follow him as he passed. The lustful gazes raked across his skin like steel blades.
Normally he would never have subjected himself to the torment of a party. A dense mass of people dressed in revealing finery, inhibitions loosened by alcohol, intent on flirting and dancing…it was his own personal hell.
But he’d promised Ivy that he’d watch over Hope. And under the throbbing agony in his head was a strange, deeper unease. A nagging sense of wrongness, like a splinter in his mind.
Be on guard, his unicorn whispered again. There is danger here.
The whirling energies of the crowd buffeted his animal like a sandstorm, but it set its hooves, enduring the assault. The firefly glimmer of its horn urged him on.
Skirting round a pair of women in low-cut silk ballgowns—and flinching as their appreciative stares stung his shoulders—he finally reached the long gallery that ran along the edge of the ballroom. He peered down over the balcony, scanning the crowds below. The dancing had not yet started, and most people were milling around the edges of the vast room. His eyes skipped from head to head.
Where is she?
His searching gaze snagged on one particular figure. Not a small, thin form seated in a wheelchair, but a broad-shouldered man dressed in a perfectly-tailored tuxedo. His slender white stick and opaque glasses marked him as visually impaired, yet his face turned upward. For a second, Hugh could have sworn that the man’s hidden eyes stared straight at him.
“Hugh?”
He stiffened, turning toward the familiar, unwelcome voice. In the general sea of pain, he’d missed the usual stab of his father’s approach.
His father stopped a careful five feet away, not coming too close. There was something strange in his expression that Hugh couldn’t quite place; a crack in the patrician dignity. If he didn’t know better, he would have said that his father looked hopeful.
“You came,” his father said, a slight hesitancy in his measured tones. “I take it this means Ivy spoke with you.”
“She did,” Hugh growled. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to punch you in the face in front of a crowd of guests. Must keep up family appearances, after all.”